6 Comments to “long-postponed horrors etc”

You mentioned the new hadron collider project earlier, and alluded to a circus (or someone else did, and you said that at least you were free)… Wal Thornhill (physicist) wrote an interesting piece on it at his website, including:

“Of course, particle physicists operate by smashing atoms in violent collisions. But if normal matter is composed of subunits of charge in some resonant state of equilibrium (the simplest picture), then smashing particles together will merely generate new unstable (short lived) resonant systems of charge, which will be interpreted as members of a weird zoo of new particles. The LHC can do no more than that.”

He also points out that the whole of modern quantum mechanics rests on the existence of a “particle” that explains mass in other particles (Higgs boson). It will be interesting to see if the LHC finds it, or if the project really is a multi-billion-dollar circus.

Interesting – or depressing – that one man’s invocation against separtion anxiety has spread from insecure teenagers to become a cultural/generational reflex. That and the leather binding makes you wonder exactly what Gollancz pictures as its target audience: but we can guess.

I never did get irony as the white flag; it’s like a canine saying, “Look, here is my mad tail, I could chase it myself; but, since it would be a lot more fun to see you doing that, I’ll pretend this thing that is stuck to me doesn’t really exist (does it?).

Blimey, I am *glad* to see you back on the Intertubes but realise I still cannot entirely handle my cantankerous verve.

Hardly original but I do sometimes wonder whether Lovecraft himself wasn’t just having us all on for a lark. When I was a boy, The Blob had me up all night but now all I want to be is Steve McQueen, and going back to its straplines has me laughing at how camp they were: The indestructible creature! Bloated with the blood of its victims! Oooooh! Naughty Blob! Lovecraft probably only wanted those maternal skirts so that he could wear them himself.